There are now 73 staff working in Gaza and 10 working remotely in Egypt.
This is a record of qualitative data made by 18 people from GCMHP professional mobile mental health teams on the ground who filled out an online questionnaire of people’s responses to three open-ended questions about their needs, psychological and social complaints and symptoms, and their coping mechanisms.
The teams worked with more than 26,000 survivors between 1 January and 25 October 2024.
Many were referred to one of GCMHP’s centres for specialised therapy programmes, which included play and drawing with a therapist for children, and talking for adults.
Others received a series of therapist visits in their tent or provisional shelter.
Vivid and detailed children’s drawings illustrate the reality of these desperate lives under bombs and shelling and contrast them with their previous happy lives of play, school, friends, and family more intensely than any words.
And the stories of some patients show the depth of trauma, despair, terror, and grief: a young woman thinks of taking her own life as it “has become with no value after I have lost my whole family”; a 13-year-old girl becomes mute; a disabled boy suffers uncontrollable anger; a child screams from nightmares every night, waking the whole family in their tent, and neighbours.
Their stories show, too, how loving care and therapy transformed these families’ lives from unbearable to liveable.
Over the past year, the mental health professionals have been quietly working in the tents and temporary centres before the opening of the new building.
The survivors’ lists of needs all start with food and water - people are starving, and the old save their food for the young. Then come tents, mattresses, waste containers, and power supply.
Gas for cooking and cooking utensils come next - indicators of the absolute deprivation in which people are living through extreme terror every day and night.
Medications, women’s hygiene kits, psychological support, and job creation are next on their lists.